LOS ANGELES — Veteran actor Dick Van Dyke, best known for his 1960s television comedy,
survived a car fire unscathed yesterday when passers-by pulled him from the smoldering vehicle
before it burst into flames on the side of a Los Angeles-area freeway.

Van Dyke, 87, said a group of motorists who stopped to render assistance, one of them apparently
an off-duty firefighter, saw him huddled in the driver’s seat of the Jaguar as he tried to place a
call for help and pulled him to safety.

“They thought I had passed out, so they yanked me out of the car,” Van Dyke told celebrity news
website TMZ.com, saying he had not initially realized that his car was burning.